Flemming Pedersen believed that big mistakes cost his team as Watford came from 3-1 down to salvage a point from their U21 Professional Development League Two South match at St Albans City this afternoon. Alex Jakubiak netted a hat-trick for the home side, his third coming in added time, after Bradley Clayton’s penalty and an Andy Gogia brace looked to have The Bees on course for victory midway through the second-half. Speaking to Bees Player after the match Flemming said that Brentford deserved to pick up the three points but we let down by some key errors.
“The result doesn’t tell the story of the game,” said Flemming. “We should definitely have won the game. In three weeks’ time we will be winning games like this by three or four goals. We made some big mistakes today but that is ok as long as we are trying to do the things that we want to do. Today at 3-1 we took things a little bit too easily. That was not only mentally but also physically because it is physically tough how we try to play.
“I wouldn’t say that we were better today than we were against Charlton Athletic last week but some of our individual actions were better. What I want to see are top level actions and for them to be top level they must be 100 per cent. I would much rather see five 100 per cent actions that 100 50 per cent actions so we are trying to go for the top.”
Brentford’s equaliser, after Jakubiak had put The Hornets ahead on 23 minutes, came from the spot after a fine passing move and their second was a result of high-pressing on the Watford back-line, both of which are things that Flemming has been trying to instill in his team. The Danish coach was positive after the match about how quickly his team was picking up the style of play required and getting results on the pitch.
“We saw some fantastic passage of play today,” said Flemming. “For the first goal there was a good ball from Chris Mepham to Gradi Milenge and then from Gradi to Josh Clarke in the outside pocket. We penetrated that pocket and then had a good inside run that opened the inside pocket for Josh to play the ball into that space. From there we had another deep run behind their left central defender and a run in front of their left central defender which won us the penalty. Those were some of the patterns that we do in training every day and for a coach it is fantastic to see that.
“Our high pressing, which we have been working on, got us our second goal and then the third was a counter-attack. While we haven’t been training on our offensive transitions yet, the run from Bradley Clayton opened up the other side for Andy Gogia. It is good to see that our training is already getting results on the pitch.”
Flemming has told his players to expect a tough next three weeks on the training pitch, at the end of which he will know the players who can push on for first-team football and those that will be left behind.
“The players need to break their limits and we need to do that every day in training,” said Flemming. “Some of the players will show us that they can swim and some will show that they can’t follow any more. We can never play a perfect game but in three weeks’ time they will have all the foundations in terms of how we want to play and from there on they will progress very quickly. Then we want the boys to be playing 70, 80 or even 90 minutes with the quality that we are after. “